


A Collection of Remains

by Jintian



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2000-09-01
Updated: 2000-09-01
Packaged: 2017-10-29 20:24:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/323832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jintian/pseuds/Jintian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post "Amor-Fati." Theoretically, what can't kill you will only make you stronger.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Collection of Remains

  
Words on the back of an envelope:

There are things you know. Lessons learned through nothing less than a lifetime of futile struggle, of blood and fury going nowhere fast, raging against the dying of the light and still in the end blinking into darkness. Defeat smells like the escaping heat of a gun, like bullets missing flesh, slowing until stopped by the inevitable force of gravity.

*

Lately I find myself scribbling things down. Sitting in meetings, in restaurants, waiting to catch a plane. It's new to me. I've kept journals before -- I have etchings dating back to childhood -- but I've never felt the urge grabbing me by the throat like this, as if I could only breathe by writing.

Perhaps that quietness comes from my childhood, all those sedate and empty days I rattled around the house. My parents (my mother and the man I have always believed to be my father) would closet themselves in their separate rooms and I would write stories to keep myself company. Adventure fantasies where I was a knight slaying dragons, a hero disarming a bomb. Then I wrote to make the day move faster, so I didn't have to count each slow hour. To forget my boyhood, not dwell on it.

I write for different reasons now.

The smoking man showed me a lifetime. I had a wife, children, a sister, even a deathbed. As false as it was -- as false as I know now it was -- the difference with the life I've actually lived is only too apparent.

I look back on the years and see how much of my personal history is missing, like a stretch of ripped cloth. Samantha, my real father, my own connections to the approaching colonization. My relationship with Diana, which now seems cast over in shadows. All of it dim and faded. Patched together out of remnants instead of being one whole tapestry.

Of these past few weeks I cannot remember...so much, so very much of what happened to me. I draw blanks on that long period for days at a time, remembering only snatches here and there. The walls and how they closed in on me. The cold, cold floor and the rails of my bed. People's faces: Krycek, Skinner, Kritschgau, my mother. Scully in brief, too-brief flashes. Then the smoking man. And Diana speaking to me, though I can't hear what she says.

So lately I've been writing. Thoughts, feelings, moods spilled onto the page as fast as my hand can push a pen. Such intangible things, but now it's imperative I don't lose them like I've lost so much else.

I once told Scully the Truth would set her free. At the time I thought I was speaking for myself as well. But I'm no longer sure I believe it. Now I wonder if the Truth hasn't become an entirely separate prison of its own, full of things impossible to escape once brought to light. And before the cage slams down on me forever, I have to collect the remains of what I can.

*

Diana's funeral was on a Saturday, in her Virginia hometown. I told Scully about it when I learned the details, but I wasn't sure if she would come. What had passed between her and Diana while I was in the hospital was still a mystery to me, but after the words we exchanged the night of the El Rico massacre I wouldn't have blamed her if she didn't.

But she did come, dressed in her usual black, eyes hidden behind a pair of sunglasses. She stood beside me in the sun-dappled cemetery where Diana's parents had been buried, bowing her head as the minister prayed aloud. I watched her because, from where we were behind a row of mourners, the coffin looked far too small to hold the body inside.

They all prayed, all the funeral-goers. Some were FBI agents, some I recognized as Diana's friends. I shifted from foot to foot, studying the faces I didn't know. Her parents had already passed away before we met, and she had no siblings. I had never been introduced to any other relatives or family friends. Could I be sure that some of the older grizzled men scattered in the throng were really who they appeared to be?

I had a flash of memory, an image I was somehow sure hadn't been created by the smoking man. Diana leaning over me with a bright white light behind her, expression drawn in troubled lines.

Was _she_ always who she appeared to be? Could I be sure of that?

Had it ever been the case that I could be sure of anything?

I reached up to touch the bandages that still swathed my head. My fingers were cool, slipping over the place where they met my skin.

When it was finished, Scully looked up at me over the rims of her sunglasses. "Are you hungry?" she asked, as if we weren't standing amongst the leftovers of a funeral. But her voice was not unkind. "I'm always hungry after...things like this. Can I treat you to lunch?"

I hesitated, wondering if it was worth it to attend the reception. Wondering if, by mingling with the other mourners, I could find some of the answers I was seeking.

But the truth was, I didn't think I was ready to have my world turned upside down again on a Saturday afternoon. Not this afternoon, anyway.

So I said, "Sure. I'll drive."

She raised her eyebrow at my bandages. "I thought you took a cab. You mean you drove yourself here?"

"Yes." My voice was tight. It had been a week, and I dared her to say anything about it.

She studied me for a moment, then nodded finally. "You probably know the area better than I do, anyway."

Veiled references like that were how she usually acknowledged my relationship with Diana.

*

I have nightmares, of course. Shadow figures move in and out of my sleep. Mad doctors sawing into my head, the smoking man stealing pieces of it for himself. I dream of my sister grown up with children of her own. And under that I dream of her somehow in front of me, weeping as I try to choke her.

Diana, too. I see scenes I remember from years before -- her long body stretched on my sheets, her hair clipped at the nape as she leaned over paperwork. And I see scenes I know have never  
happened -- Diana standing in the driveway of a suburban home, Diana in a wedding dress, Diana pregnant and beaming.

Sometimes I even dream of the voices. In my sleep they drive me insane with the chaos, the meaningless babble, the utter sound and fury. And I wake up thrashing, in the dark hours of early morning, covered in sweat and still shivering.

The silence at those moments deafens me.

I've been hiding it all from Scully. She gives me concerned glances at work, calls me every night under the pretext of talking about a file. I respond as if I see none of it, as if the past few weeks never happened. And it is a strange thing, to be the one covering up the truth for once. To be holding it so close to me, like a hand of cards I don't dare show.

On the surface, everything is normal once more. But in my dream world, life spins its twisted threads, breeding tangles and hard, thorny knots. In a game of cat-and-mouse, diving between the hours and the cycle of night and day, I hide one world from the other. Hoping not to be caught in between.

*

I took Scully to a cafe that still had a "Grand Opening" sign in the window. She ordered her usual chef salad and picked at it with a fork she wiped on her napkin. I had a half-finished plate of burger and fries that got cold in front of me as I watched her eat.

After a moment she looked up at me, puzzled. "You should have told me you weren't that hungry."

I shrugged and spread my fingers over the table. "I don't mind."

She put her fork down and took a sip of water. I darted my eyes away from the movement of her throat as she swallowed. "Do you want to go to the reception after all?"

"No." I shook my head. "No, really, I don't mind."

There were a couple of kids in the cafe, monkeying around on the tall stools at the counter. Neither was more than eight years old. I watched them, wondering idly where their parents were. Until Emily Sim I'd never thought of myself as a father, not even when Diana and I were together. And yet just last night I had dreamt of putting my hand to Diana's swollen belly, feeling a tiny kick against her abdominal wall.

I looked back at Scully, who had been watching me watching the kids. Neither of us bothered to make any pretense about our scrutiny.

Eventually she blinked and looked out the window. The sunlight lit her forehead and I could see the tiny down hairs on her skin, invisible under any other circumstances.

"This is a pretty town," she said. I thought she was changing the subject until she continued, "Diana grew up here, right?"

Baffled, I answered, "Yes."

She swung her gaze back to me. "If you don't want to talk, I understand. I know it's --"

"No," I interrupted. "It's not that. I just.... What do you want to talk about?"

She didn't answer right away, instead studying her hands as she carefully re-folded her napkin backwards along its crease. Her silence hung in the air, stretching with the seconds.

"Scully?"

"Mulder," she said, her voice gone smooth. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said anything. This isn't the best time."

That forced a laugh. "When would be a better time than this to talk about Diana?" I paused. "That's what you want to do, right?"

She shook her head. "It can wait."

I leaned toward her. "Scully. Please say what you want. I know you've been keeping quiet for a while. Ever since --"

"Mulder," Scully said. "I'm not going to badmouth Diana." She looked out the window again. "I just wanted to tell you that I...was wrong about her."

I sat back, silenced.

Her eyes met mine. "I was wrong," she repeated, and I could tell the words had to come unstuck in her throat before she spoke them. She sighed. Folded her napkin back the right way.

I reached across the table and took it from her, feeling the fragile paper between my fingers. "How do you know that?" I asked.

She seemed surprised. "I told you that morning. She gave me the electronic key, and the book. If she hadn't done that I would never have found you."

"I've been wondering," I said, measuring it out, "if that's really the case."

Her eyebrows shot up. "What do you mean?"

"I mean there are only so many explanations for how she could have gotten access like that to begin with."

Scully tilted her head, looking up at me with that way she does. "It's possible she was just _working_ from the inside."

"You mean her motives were pure, even if her actions weren't?" I felt myself wincing, but Scully didn't see it.

"We don't know what her actions were, exactly."

My voice felt heavy and damp. "I think you were speculating along the right lines, before El Rico."

Her brow furrowed. "Mulder, why...? Why the sudden doubts?"

"Why don't you agree with your initial instinct?" I countered.

"Why don't _you_?"

I sighed. I folded the paper napkin in half again, into quarters. "Because. Because I'm beginning to think I was mistaken. That I let myself be blinded by the past."

She was quiet, waiting for me to continue.

"I'd led this life with her, and it was over, but I still didn't want to listen to you. Even though all the clues were pointing where you said. Because to accept the truth would have made it all look so _false_."

"Mulder..." she started.

I held up a hand. "You realize that if we'd gotten to El Rico any earlier that night, we might have died ourselves."

"Do you honestly think Diana knew that was going to happen?"

"She told me later she never even got there. And I believed her." My voice cracked, and I had to clear my throat. "But she left before we did. She had at least an hour's head start. When we arrived, those bodies were still smoking and the base personnel were running around scared shitless. Diana was nowhere; she didn't contact me until a week later. You tell me, how do we know she didn't lie?"

Scully's eyes burned into me. "She loved you, Mulder."

I swallowed.

Scully went on, tapping the table once with her knuckle. "Whatever she did, whoever she was really working with, that doesn't change the fact that in the end, she saved you. And I believe she did it at the cost of her own life."

I shook my head. My throat felt like someone was trying to crumple it in a fist. I had to grate my voice through the cracks. "Scully, everyone was already gone by the time you found me. The smoking man got what he came for. All you did was collect the remains."

She paled. "Then Mulder, what did she die for?"

I'd been thinking about the same question. Every night when I woke up into silence, my false life shredding around me. But even with Scully asking it, I still had no answer.

*

Words on a paper napkin:

Survival. A constant measure of self. Each breath taken is one that could have been the last. Each life hangs from a spider's silk thread. And yet when I look around at all the billions of us inhabiting the same planet, everyone going about their daily lives and planning for mundane futures, none of them realizing how close the end could be --

*

I drove Scully back to the cemetery, where her car was still parked. I waited while she got in and started the ignition. From where we were I could see flashes of green grass in the cemetery, but the place we had left Diana was too far away to be visible.

"Call me when you get home," Scully mouthed through her window, her face anxious. I nodded and followed her out of the lot, keeping a steady distance behind until we reached the Alexandria exit. She lifted a hand to wave in her rearview mirror as I left the highway.

Then I was driving alone, sweeping down the two-lane road with summer trees casting shadows on my dashboard. I'd made this trip with Diana several times, years and years ago. She liked to ride with the windows open, so the wind could lift her hair.

I had to pull over and stop on the shoulder when I realized my hands were shaking.

*

When I was a kid, I used to have trouble falling asleep. So instead of counting sheep, I would picture myself lying there, my house enclosing me in a protective shell. Then I'd sweep my inner eye outward, to encompass the entire town with my house just one of many lined up on the streets. Then all of New England, the cities lit up like you see from a plane.

Then North America, and the world, hanging blue and solemn in its orbit. The solar system with Pluto wandering on the boundary. Then I'd picture the rest of outer space, trying to see all of it at once inside my head. The Milky Way, the galaxies, everything getting bigger and bigger.

And then at the farthest point, at the limit of what I could imagine, I'd switch direction and move back towards myself. I'd try to picture everything rushing right down to me, a skinny kid lying in his bed trying to fall asleep.

And I'd imagine my inner eye zooming closer, getting smaller, until it was the size of molecules. My vision reduced to the miniscule spaces between my skin and the sheets, tinier than specks of dust.

Every night now when I close my eyes, I try to do the same thing. But every time, when I'm poised at the limits of the universe, hanging on the edge and ready to come back, I fall off.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Audrey Roget for kindness and piercing insight, mountainphile for the title, and Forte for the honest, hard-hitting beta. And of course Diana Battis, for friendship I treasure, and sophiahelix, who showed me what this story was really about.


End file.
